This may well be the most perverted use of pornography I’ve ever seen. It was used by the GOP to scuttle a science education bill.

The America COMPETES act, instituted under the Bush Administration in 2007, funds a lot of science, technology, and math education programs.  This is one of the few pro-science programs to come out of the Bush years, and has funded innovative programs necessary to keep us globally competitive in the years to come.  It was up for renewal in Congress, and had over 100 co-sponsors in the House, and left committee last month with a wide margin of bipartisan support.  It was well on its way to passage too, until Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) hatched a plan.

It seems that several GOP members were concerned about the level of spending authorized by the bill in these tough economic times.  Fair enough, and a reasonable debate to have.  But rather than debate the issue on the merits, Hall introduced a motion to recommit.

His motion proposed to add a new provision that would bar the federal government from paying the salaries of employees who’ve viewed pornography at work.

The way the motion works is that Congressmen either need to vote against it, authorizing the bill to continue on its way to a floor vote, or vote for it, which causes the bill to go back to committee where it will languish and possibly die.  But this motion was laden with “Do you still beat your wife?” strategy.  Congressmen voting against the motion would surely look forward to their opponents in the upcoming mid-term election running ads about how they voted to allow federal employees to watch porn at work.  Yet voting for it means a dramatic delay in the funding, likely causing the current programs to end while the bill tries to make its way out of committee again.  And to no one’s surprise, the risk-averse Congress voted for the motion. Thus cementing their anti-porn cred, and condemning the bill to committee Limbo.

No one is advocating for government workers to spend your tax dollars watching porn.  There are rules against that now, and surely better ways to deal with it than amendments to unrelated legislation.  But in the end, this motion had nothing to do with porn in the workplace.  It had only to do with using fear of porn as a political lever to kill an otherwise good bill.  And that is the true perversion here.